We Are the Foundlings

THE FOUNDLINGS

We are left writhing by roadsides or under trees. We are dumped in trash heaps. We are cradled in now rigor mortised but once tender arms of parents killed by war, plague, inferno, flood, or scores of other tragedies.

We are the foundlings.

Around this big world, we, the tiniest, are the most helpless. We are abandoned to the whims of the elements, animals, sometimes, worst of all, to the wrath of humans.

We come into the lives of others naked, or nearly so. Those other babes and toddlers in our predicament, thousands, maybe millions – no one knows – most never survive.

Sometimes wild animals nurse, feed, protect and raise us as their own.

How do we cope? How do we survive our beginnings then thrive? Through the goodwill of others, by mere chance, but finally and ultimately, by fantasy we spin in our feral yet developing minds. As we grow, unbeknownst to those around us, we retreat to a blissful make-believe of serendipity and lark to keep us sane so we can flourish in a life in which we are given a second chance.

Now cometh our stories and those of whom help and hinder us – our, Tales of the Fiction House. For all those ‘WE,’ of whom I am one, now do I speak for they have beckoned me to do so — Raji Singh